


The Happy Return

by likeadeuce



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-17
Updated: 2009-12-17
Packaged: 2017-10-04 12:03:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likeadeuce/pseuds/likeadeuce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gunn goes to Sunnydale to make a delivery, so Wesley doesn't have to</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Happy Return

Gunn leaned back in his chair and smiled at Wesley. "Explain to me again," he said. "Why I have to make the drive to Sunny-D?"

Wes looked across what had very lately become his desk, rather than Angel's. "Because I'm your boss? And I said so?" He couldn't even make either suggestion into a statement.

Gunn already knew he was going to take the assignment, but he couldn't resist needling his friend a little. Gunn had experience running his own crew, and he knew that wishy-washy don't-know-if-I'm-your-boss-or-your-homey crap didn't fly, even when your crew was your friends. Especially when it was your friends. If Wes was ever going to convince anybody that he actually ran Angel Investigations, he needed to start acting like he believed it himself. So Gunn tilted his head at Wesley, with an amused grin that said, _You can do better than that_.

Wes tried again. "Because you have a truck." Better. At least he hadn't phrased it in the form of a question.

Still, Gunn couldn't make it as easy as all that. "You have a truck," he answered.

"I have a sport utility _ve_hicle," Wes shot back, like this was the first thing in the whole conversation he was sure of.

"So that big-ass thing you drive is a car?"

"No, it's a. . ."

"Truck. For yuppies. And if it's not big enough to haul a damn bookcase, you really wasted your money. Besides, you actually know where this place is."

"Gunn, I'm extremely busy."

"Can't Cordelia get it next time she goes to visit her parents?"

"Or maybe Angel can, the next time he pays a casual visit to Buffy. That would work well, except I need this item sometime before Satan buys a snow blower."

Which circled back to the original argument. "So why don't you go get it? You're the one who ordered it from this Miles guy, right?"

Gunn knew Rupert Giles' name perfectly well, and Wesley's expression said that he knew Gunn knew. He stood up from the desk, hitting Gunn with a hard look that bordered just on the edge of a glare. "All right, I confess. I don't want to go back to Sunnydale. You have me there, are you happy?"

Gunn smiled. "You lived there for a year, right? How bad can it be?"

"Five months, actually," Wes corrected. "And Ye Olde Scooby Gang didn't exactly  
start a chapter of the Wesley Wyndam-Pryce fan club." Without dropping his steady gaze, he said, "They didn't like me much."

Gunn hadn't expected that, but then, English had his surprises. He would be all veiled and cryptic, right up to the point where he blurted out more than you ever expected to hear, and you felt like you should look away.

Gunn didn't look away. He owed Wesley that much. "They were idiots, then."

Now Wes looked down, but Gunn could see his lips twitch. "I wasn't ruling out that possibility. But nonetheless. . ." Looking up at Gunn, he lost the battle with restraint, and a real smile broke over his face. Wes usually seemed embarrassed by even the faintest praise, and now he said softly. "Please do this, Charles. And don't believe everything Giles says about me, but. . ." His mouth twitched again. "Don't doubt it all, either."

*

Charles Gunn couldn't believe he was walking through the door of some place called the Magic Box. Sure, he had been in occult shops all over L.A., but they were dark and sinister and had names that sounded like breeds of demon, European basketball players. The multi-colored Magic Box sign seemed like it should hang over a kiosk at the Sunnydale Mall.

In fact, the whole town of Sunnydale looked like it could be in a mall. Or a theme park: Disney's Suburbia. If you didn't count the high number of cemeteries he had passed since he turned off the highway, or the hulking wreck of a building he assumed had been Cordelia's infamous "high school _flambé_", you'd hardly know you were on a Hellmouth. Unless your idea of hell included a town full of white people and their ugly-ass lawn ornaments. In that case, it was hard to argue.

_Give me South Central any day_, Gunn thought. He and Alonna had lived in that part of L.A. for most of their lives, back when their Grandmom was still alive, and their Dad even stopped by occasionally. When they still made an effort to go to high school, before the Fight consumed everything and they slid downtown into the warehouses.

The way his old neighborhood was set up, it wasn't so different from what he saw in parts of Sunnydale. Houses and yards, lawns and front stoops. But in L.A., you'd see people sitting out on their steps, kids playing in the sprinklers. People walking by, laughing and calling jokes to a neighbor out in front working on his car. High-fiving friends, swaying to music with a real beat as it poured from a boom box propped in someone's window, or from the stereo of a sweet, souped-up car. Actually talking to the people who lived on your street. And all right, some of those conversations would be about how Stinky was going to cap T-Bone because he'd been watering down the product. But plenty of the talk was about other things –kids psyched about the Lakers or the new hip-hop show they saw last week, grown men remembering the time they heard Dr. King speak, arguing how many rounds Tyson could have gone with Ali, or how many moves it would take for Kareem to school Shaq.

The porches in Sunnydale were wider than the stoops in South Central, but nobody sat on them, and you could hardly see a kid playing on any of the wide green lawns. At best, kids were running from the porch to the Pathfinder, in their soccer jerseys or their Cub Scout uniforms, as their no-sense-of-humor Mamas whisked them from one over-organized activity to another. _Damn,_ he thought, _no wonder Wes and Angel and Cordelia all shook the dust of this town off their feet._ Those three didn't have much in common, but at least they shared the good sense to leave Sunnydale behind.

The bell jingled as he walked into the Magic Box. A thin, blonde girl was bent over the register, and Gunn couldn't avoid the surge of excitement that he might be meeting a vampire slayer at last. You couldn't grow up fighting the fight against the undead without hearing a thing or two about Slayers, although Gunn had always figured it was a kind of vamp fairy tale. Now that he might actually get a chance to meet one. . .

The girl at the counter straightened and gave him a plastered-on capitalist smile. Gunn noted her nametag: ANYA. So much for celebrity slayer encounters. "Welcome, potential customer!" Anya beamed. "This could be your lucky day. We are running a special on hedgehog quills, seventy-two for the price of forty-eight. As I am sure you well know, multiples of six are particularly significant for the medicinal properties of _Porcupinus_ and. . ." She leaned across the counter and confided. "They are especially good for growing hair."

Gunn involuntarily put a hand to his close-shaved head. "Thanks, but. . .nothing wrong with my hair."

"Right." The girl nodded, almost manically, and winked. "I can just mix you up a nice little charm to counteract that confounding spell. Though I warn you that, when it wears off, you will be extremely upset by what happened to your hair." With another wink she added. "This consultation is free. It is one of many services we provide."

"There's nothing wrong with my hair," Gunn repeated. "And I'm not here to buy anything. I'm looking for Giles."

"Oh!" Her eyes widened. "Does he owe you money? Because I must inform you that the Magic Box is incorporated under the Uniform Commercial Code of California, and therefore any personal expenses – or, just for example, gambling debts – that Giles might have incurred may not be satisfied out of the proceeds of the store. Furthermore -- "

Before she could finish, a door in the back of the shop opened. "Anya! What on earth are you telling poor --?" The newcomer stopped and looked up at Gunn, blinking from behind wire-rimmed glasses. "Poor Not-Wesley." Offering a hand, he said, "Rupert Giles."

"Gunn," he answered. "Charles Gunn, but just. . ."

"Yes, Gunn. Just Giles."

Gunn glanced over at Anya, who was still scowling at them both. He asked, "Does someone here have a gambling problem?"

"No!" Looking annoyed, Giles reached into the pocket of his jacket – _so that's what tweed is_, Gunn thought. Taking out a square of cloth, Giles began to clean his glasses. "I simply happened to mention that I might be willing to place a friendly wager on next month's. . ."

"It always starts with one friendly wager!" protested Anya. "From there leads the road to depravity and vice! Am I the _only_ one who pays attention to very special episodes? And I just got this job." She stomped her foot. "I am not losing my livelihood to loan sharks!"

"So what?" Gunn asked Giles. "You were just gonna bet on the NC double A's?"

"Actually. . ." Giles cleared his throat. "The World Snooker Championships."

"Don't sweat it, Anya," Gunn told her. "There's only one man in the state of California who would take that bet, and I left him in Los Angeles." He smiled to Giles. "Wes wasn't feeling too hot."

"Oh yes. Oh dear. I heard about that dreadful business. Of course, Watchers expect that we may be injured in the line of duty, but being shot down there in. . ." He glanced guiltily at Gunn. "In the city."

"I didn't shoot him," Gunn said drily. "I work for him. We work together. He did me a favor." _And got gut-shot for his trouble._ Gunn had never been able to purge the sense of his guilt for dragging Wesley into his dumb plan – although, oddly, it was only after the shooting that they had begun to feel like friends. "He's fine now. But I figured the least I could do was pick up some furniture."

"Well," Giles straightened himself, a little indignantly. "We are hardly discussing a mere item of furniture. But. . .you should come home with me."

"I should come huh?"

"The shelves are in my home," Giles sighed. "This was as much a personal as a professional endeavor on my part and – Anya, please mind the store."

"I will certainly try to answer the questions of the zero customers on the left side of the store while collecting orders from the nonexistent patrons on the right side."

"You can count the money," Giles called over his shoulder, and Anya gave a responding squeal of glee. Gunn remembered, vaguely, that Cordelia's ex-boyfriend was supposed to be dating someone named Anya. Knowing that explained – well, it didn't explain much, actually, except that this Xander guy seemed to like girls who liked cash.

"Business bad?" Gunn asked, as they walked out of the store. Thinking of AI's ordeal over the last few months, he could sympathize. "Have you tried advertising?"

"Yes," Giles sighed. "It mostly brought in hell-gods."

*

Gunn sometimes wondered if there was a force that caused people who made a life fighting vampires to retreat into dark, windowless spaces. For a long time, he had thought it was just he and his own crew, driven into the warehouses by necessity. But he had spent time at Wes and Cordy's homes now, too. As cheerily decorated as they might be on the inside, both places were remarkably scarce on natural light. Which made it convenient when Angel wanted to come over – although Gunn was still making up his mind about the suddenly-epiphanied vampire, and he wasn't so sure where Angel pop-ins fit on the scale of "good things." Still, Gunn himself had ended up leasing a heavily-shaded basement unit a few blocks from the Hyperion, a place where the sunrise never woke him up. Strange, that was. Even stranger, considering that the newly human Darla had gone straight for the most spectacular view that her hosts could arrange. So creatures of the night chased the sunlight, and those who fought them holed up in the dark. Yeah, it all made perfect sense, if you started from the assumption that people, and non-people, were about equally fucked-up.

Despite all the sunshine in Sunnydale, Rupert Giles had managed to find a dark ground floor flat of his own. It gave Gunn the vague sense of a cave, walls lined with books and record albums, and various occult artifacts. Wesley's place reminded Gunn of a Demon Pottery Barn, while Giles' was more like the storerooms at Gunn's old high school, where he and Alonna used to go to lift old shop supplies they could use to make weapons.

This must have been Giles' element, though, because he looked noticeably more relaxed once they got inside. Walking toward the kitchen, he said, "Would you care for some tea?"

Gunn pointed to himself. "Still not Wesley. But if you've got some of that English beer like he likes. . ." Giles reached into the fridge and held up a bottle of India Pale Ale. Gunn nodded his approval. "Now that's what I'm talking about."

"Yes, I understand no one in this country moves furniture without drinking beer. So Xander informs me, and it does seem to be one of your more appealing traditions."

"Usually happens after the moving, but. . ." Gunn smiled and took a sip from the bottle, very cold and just the thing after the long drive without air-conditioning. "Almost worth braving the land of the Soccer Moms. Is it just me or is this the whitest town in California?"

"Yes, well. . ." Giles laughed. "Oddly enough, my friend Olivia used to say the same thing. When she came to visit. She was a very pleasant . . . well, lovely. . .African-Amer -- , that is to say, British, um, West Indian. . ."

Ah, Gunn thought, the old _Let me make sure I mention my black ex-girlfriend_ routine. He found it more amusing than annoying, especially since he had been through the same thing with Wesley. A few months ago, on the wrong end of too many margaritas, English had mumbled out a story about losing his virginity to a Jamaican barmaid in Oxford ("She had the most amazing braids in her hair, Charles, they were intoxicating, she was a bloody goddess"). At that point, Gunn had felt that it was for his friend's own good to say, _Please promise me you will never again try to use 'I banged a sister once' to prove that you are one with the black man._ He didn't know Giles well enough to give him the same advice, so Gunn just said, "It's actually still OK to say 'black.' We just made up the rest of that shit to mess with you people."

"Yes, of course." Giles popped a beer for himself, looking vaguely embarrassed, and asked. "Are you ready to size up the item in question. I trust Wesley explained. . .?"

Gunn shrugged. "He said something about a custom-made bookshelf. I always figured him more for an Ikea kind of guy, but. . .he's the boss, so I do what he says." This was a slightly simplified version of the dynamic, of course, but he wanted to be sure Giles knew that Wes was really in charge. That was what being part of a crew was about. You could rag on your own people all day, but let some guy from another block diss them, and it was a whole new game.

Giles was leading the way into the back room of the apartment, when he stopped to frown at Gunn. "Wesley is the boss? I had the impression that you worked for Angel."

"Angel Investigations," Gunn answered. "But Wes is the boss. It's . . ." Gunn had no intention of telling Giles what had been up with Angel for the past months, not if the people who actually knew him hadn't bothered to tell. At the same time, he was not about to utter some dumb-ass cliché like "It's complicated." Instead he said, "It's a team effort. But Wes has sort of risen to the top there. Natural leadership, I guess."

"Yes, of course," Giles said, and from the look on his face, Gunn could tell he was trying not to say, "Wesley Wyndam-Pryce???" Instead, he answered. "I'm happy to hear that he's grown into that. It takes some Watchers longer than others, but. . ." He smiled. "Proper training always shows itself, I suppose. Now here is the shelf. . ."

Gunn had a feeling that Giles had more to say on the subject of Wesley, but he also figured he wasn't here to let some old white guy piss him off. Gunn didn't have much experience with older white men – mostly cops, honestly and, well, Angel, but he didn't exactly count as 'older' to Gunn. He didn't look older, and he sure as hell knew how to act like a spoiled teenager. There had been a history teacher in Gunn's high school, the one who annoyingly identified Charles as 'gifted' with 'unrealized potential' and made him want to scream, _Why are you even TRYING, man, do you really think there's a point to this? Do you really think my life is going to be better if I can list seven causes of the Civil War, like everybody doesn't KNOW what caused the Civil War, like me and my friends and family aren't still out there fighting it every day?_ Maybe Giles reminded Gunn a little of that teacher. Or maybe not, maybe thinking that was every bit as lame as Wes identifying Gunn with some girl who sucked him off in his dorm room a decade ago, just because their skin happened to be more or less the same color.

Now he focused on what Giles was showing him, a tall bookshelf that looked, well, like a bookshelf. "Um, great," said Gunn, wondering why he had driven all the way to Sunnydale for something they could have picked up at Home Depot. "Is it like. . .a family heirloom or something?"

"No no, it's new. I – had Xander make one for me. This is a copy. It is solid oak, which of course is a center of strength in the Celtic worldview. Willow mystically overlaid it with essence of Guajoco wood. Excellent material both for stakes and crosses, and well. . . I supervised, so I suppose you could say it was a team effort."

He looked so pleased with himself, that Gunn was almost sorry to say, "But it's just a bookshelf. Right?"

"Specially equipped to store certain mystical volumes. Various compendia, indexes, et cetera, have a tendency to get up and walk away. It can be quite amusing but inconvenient, to say the least, when you happen to need them."

"Ah," Gunn said. "Right." He shook his head. "I guess it's weird for me to say that sounds weird to me. What with the stuff I see every day. But I've been fighting vamps practically since I could walk. All this bookman-watchery stuff, though, that's all pretty new. The whole idea that there's some kind of _science_ to fighting vamps? I always pretty much went with kick, punch, and dust."

Giles took off his glasses and peered more closely at Gunn, maybe for the first time really looking at him. "Since you were a child? How extraordinary."

"What's extraordinary about it?" Gunn demanded. "There are vamps in the world, there are kids in the world. You think they just happen not to run into each other, except when the vamps want fresh meat? Naw, man." He shook his head. "I learned to look out for myself, and I taught my friends to do it too." He frowned at Giles. "Haven't you known about vamps since you were a teeny-tiny?"

"That's a different thing entirely. Training may begin at an early age, but potential watchers are vetted and tested with the greatest care."

"And what, they just draw your name out of a hat to get the early Watcher-training? The reason I ask, seems like it might be one thing I was qualified to do. But somehow the recruiters from the Watchers' Academy never made it to my 'hood." He was needling the older Watcher a little, but he was also genuinely curious. For some reason, Wes always shut down when Gunn tried to ask him about the Council.

"There is a certain element of family tradition."

Gunn laughed. "Does that make you and Wes cousins or something?"

"No! Well. . ." Giles seemed to ponder. "I suppose, perhaps. Possibly somewhere back on my mother's side."

"So what? Watchers are like college football coaches? They just get hired because they're somebody's kid?"

"Well. Wesley's father was a very eminent Watcher." He took a swig of his beer, and looked over the top of it at Gunn. "Make of that what you will."

Suddenly everything that Gunn knew about Wes made a new kind of sense – including his long silences on the subject of the Council. Getting thrown out of your job sucked, but it happened to a lot of people. Getting thrown out of the job you'd been groomed for since birth, while disappointing and alienating your father in the process – that was considerably more than ordinary, everyday sucking. When Gunn managed to speak, there was a warning edge in his voice. "Wes is good at what he does."

"Of course. He always has been." Giles laughed quietly, as if at a joke of his own. "Practically perfect in every way. That's what did him in." He looked up at Gunn. "Your friend had very good instincts. Still has, I'm sure. But when I knew him, he always put the Council dogma first. Forgot about the people involved." He laughed. "Should I tell you something funny?"

"Yeah, I bet it's hilarious."

"Do you know what Buffy and Wesley finally fought about? The thing that got him fired, first by her and then by the Council?"

Gunn shook his head.

"Angel. He was injured, badly. The Council had resources that could have helped him, but they insisted that Council policy forbade giving aid to a vampire. Wesley was forced to be the messenger of that decision." He looked closely at Gunn. "You do see why this is funny?"

"A little bit." Gunn had never been able to get a handle on Wesley's exact relationship with Angel, but the vampire was clearly more to him than any old boss. He couldn't hide that. Not for lack of trying but, that was the thing with Wes. The harder he tried to hide something, the plainer it was written on his face.

Giles continued. "You see, I was never quite able to decide how I felt about Angel."

Gunn certainly understood how that could be. "Have a run-in with his dark side?"

Giles stiffened and Gunn knew that, quite by accident, he had hit close to the truth. He could see Giles struggling with how much to tell, but finally, the Watcher simply said, "It doesn't matter why. None of my concerns are relevant to Angel as he is today. But I was never entirely comfortable with the former Scourge of Europe working so closely with – to put it quite honestly, dating -- my Slayer. Yet I was unable to prevent the relationship, and I am sure that was one factor in my dismissal by the Council. Then they sent in the new, everything-by-the-book young Watcher, direct from central casting."

He paused to sip his beer, until Gunn, impatient, prompted, "Go on."

"I was certain Wesley would have a coronary episode as soon as he realized what was happening with Angel. I must admit that I partly looked forward to it. He would say what I was thinking, and I wouldn't have to be the bad guy. So I waited and I waited, while Wesley was fussing over whether all of our stakes and crosses were regulation size, and whether books should be shelved by height or width or the weight of the paper. So finally, one night I asked him. 'Aren't you going to say anything about Angel?' He thought for a moment, and he looked at me. I remember his exact words. He said, 'Angel's a fighter. He's on our side, and I'd be quite sanguine to trust him with my life. I could count on one hand the people I could say that about. I'm not nearly so stupid as to throw such an ally away.' And then he went on with his work."

Gunn frowned. "Sanguine?"

"Happy. Contented. Point of interest, it also means bloody. But that's neither here nor there." Giles took off his glasses, and after knowing him for half an hour, Gunn already realized that this meant the important point was coming. "I realized something then, that may turn out to be rather significant, in the long term. It occurred to me that the entire 'I am the very model of a modern slayer's watcher' routine was utter bollocks, and what I had just seen was the real Wesley. I'm not claiming," Giles added, putting the glasses back on his nose, "That Wesley was at all conscious of this, at the time. But from that day forward, I suppose everything that has happened was inevitable. If that makes any sense."

Gunn shook his head. "Most of it makes some kind of sense," he said. "Except why you're telling all of this to me, who you just now met."

Giles sighed. "Well, you're the one who bothered to come, aren't you?"

"You had this speech all prepared for Wes?"

Giles flushed a little, and Gunn knew he had the man again. "I wouldn't say so much prepared, but. . .it's been on my mind. Especially since I heard about the. . .accident." He stood and walked to his desk, and came back with a wrapped parcel. "I also wanted to give him this. To break in the new bookcase." He smiled. "And this one won't grow legs or walk away.

*

When Gunn walked into the office at the Hyperion, Wesley was trying far too hard to be casual. "How'd it go, then? Boring drive, huh?"

"You said it," Gunn answered. "But you are now the proud owner of one magical bookcase and. . ." He slapped the package down on Wesley's desk. "Whatever this is."

"This is from Giles?" Wesley frowned and eyed the package as though it might explode.

"I'll take a wild guess and say it's a book. And supposedly, not the walking, biting kind."

"Yes, I. . ." He undid the wrapping, lifted the book to look at the spine and said, "Holy shit!" Looking up, he flushed slightly, and stammered for a moment as though looking for a more appropriately British expression. Finally, he gave up, and just explained. "I think this is a first edition. Yes, nineteen-thirty-seven. C.S. Forester. Sea stories, they're quite – well, bloody marvelous, really." He looked up at Gunn. "This is a gift?"

"No, Wes. He wrapped it up so that he could call the police and accuse you of stealing it."

"It's just – well, why?"

Gunn shrugged, and sat on the desk, looking down at the book over Wesley's shoulder. He read out the title. "The Happy Return. Do you know what it's about?"

"There's a series. This is a few books into it. It starts with a boy, Horatio Hornblower. I mean, he starts out as a boy. Midshipman. Young and green. He gets knocked a bit, but then, by the time of this volume?" A smile spread over Wesley's face. "He's a captain in the Royal Navy."

"Wow," said Gunn solemnly. "Does he get to wear a sailor suit?" Wes gave him a sour look, and Gunn softened. "Giles isn't sore at you, Wes. I think he wished you'd come in person."

Wesley's gaze traveled to the phone. "I don't suppose it would hurt if I gave him a call."

"Not a bit," Gunn answered. He rose to leave the office, then called over his shoulder. "Also, when you talk to him? I think he wants to make a bet on something called snooker." Wesley smiled broadly now, and Gunn wondered how often he saw that more than once in a day. It was almost worth the price of a drive to Sunnydale.


End file.
